Commissioner Levy on housing production targets and homeownership expansion
Levy outlines production goals of 28,000 affordable homes over two fiscal years including 8,000 extremely/very low-income units, plans to double Open Door homeownership production, launch the Our Home term sheet for cooperative conversions, and increase Home First down payment assistance to serve 600 homebuyers.
Since our June closings, we have been ramping up our new housing production with the goal of building 28,000 affordable homes over the next two fiscal years.
This includes 8,000 units that will serve extremely and very low-income households, 2,000 units dedicated to senior housing, and a 40% increase in the number of households moving out of shelter.
With respect to homeownership, we are advancing plans to double production of our open door program, launch of the new term sheet for our home, which will support conversion of small and mid-sized rental buildings to limited equity cooperatives, and increase
funding for Home First, our down payment assistance program, with the goal of serving 600 homebuyers over the next two years.
And we are working with our development partners to clearly communicate HPD priorities with emphasis on cost efficiency, readiness to proceed, advancing our fair housing goals,
and increasing the number of affordable projects built on publicly owned land.
By offering our partners clearer communication and greater certainty, we are reducing backlogs in our pipeline and seeing meaningful savings in total development costs.
Alongside our partner agencies, we have begun to implement the actions outlined in our speed report
port rolled out in May, which include process changes for Housing Connect, with several changes going into effect this fall.
We have increased staff lines for our development team to bring on program liaisons who will ensure that projects are moving through the pipeline quickly and who will assist in cutting through red tape.
We are also taking steps to ensure that our neighborhoods are equipped to deal with the impacts of climate change, both in terms of our decarbonization goals and with respect to making neighborhoods more resilient.
As we work to address the devastating loss of housing that occurred in the Hollis community last week,
HPD and our partners across the city are focused on a multi-pronged approach, utilizing specific building-level interventions such as the READY program and the Resilient Retrofit program, planning for neighborhood-wide green and blue infrastructure investments,
like those planned for the Jewel Street neighborhood, and working with individual property owners and tenants on options for voluntary buyouts where necessary.